My Blog

Posts for: December, 2018

While the sport of golf may not look too dangerous from the sidelines, players know it can sometimes lead to mishaps. There are accidents involving golf carts and clubs, painful muscle and back injuries, and even the threat of lightning strikes on the greens. Yet it wasn’t any of these things that caused professional golfer Danielle Kang’s broken tooth on the opening day of the LPGA Singapore tournament.

“I was eating and it broke,” explained Kang. “My dentist told me, I've chipped another one before, and he said, you don't break it at that moment. It's been broken and it just chips off.” Fortunately, the winner of the 2017 Women’s PGA championship got immediate dental treatment, and went right back on the course to play a solid round, shooting 68.

Kang’s unlucky “chip shot” is far from a rare occurrence. In fact, chipped, fractured and broken teeth are among the most common dental injuries. The cause can be crunching too hard on a piece of ice or hard candy, a sudden accident or a blow to the face, or a tooth that’s weakened by decay or repetitive stress from a habit like nail biting. Feeling a broken tooth in your mouth can cause surprise and worry—but luckily, dentists have many ways of restoring the tooth’s appearance and function.

Exactly how a broken tooth is treated depends on how much of its structure is missing, and whether the soft tissue deep inside of it has been compromised. When a fracture exposes the tooth’s soft pulp it can easily become infected, which may lead to serious problems. In this situation, a root canal or extraction will likely be needed. This involves carefully removing the infected pulp tissue and disinfecting and sealing the “canals” (hollow spaces inside the tooth) to prevent further infection. The tooth can then be restored, often with a crown (cap) to replace the entire visible part. A timely root canal procedure can often save a tooth that would otherwise need to be extracted (removed).

For less serious chips, dental veneers may be an option. Made of durable and lifelike porcelain, veneers are translucent shells that go over the front surfaces of teeth. They can cover minor to moderate chips and cracks, and even correct size and spacing irregularities and discoloration. Veneers can be custom-made in a dental laboratory from a model of your teeth, and are cemented to teeth for a long-lasting and natural-looking restoration.

Minor chips can often be remedied via dental bonding. Here, layers of tooth-colored resin are applied to the surfaces being restored. The resin is shaped to fill in the missing structure and hardened by a special light. While not as long-lasting as other restoration methods, bonding is a relatively simple and inexpensive technique that can often be completed in just one office visit.

Moving teeth to better positions through orthodontics not only improves dental function and health, it can vastly improve your appearance. But to achieve a result that continues to be attractive as you age requires thorough planning and forethought.

That’s because your body continues to change all during life. While the most accelerated growth happens in childhood and adolescence, even older adults continue to change, especially in their facial features. A good deal of research has helped identify and catalog these changes, which orthodontists now incorporate into their corrective treatments for poor bites (malocclusions).

For example, the lips grow until they reach their maximum thickness in girls usually around age 14 and boys age 16. But researchers have also found lip thickness gradually diminishes for most people beginning in their late teens until about age 80. In other words, the appearance of your lips in your elderly years will be vastly different than in your teens. The same holds true for other facial features: our facial profile flattens as the nose becomes longer and more pronounced while the lower part of the face shortens.

Using this knowledge of the effects of aging on the face, orthodontists now attempt to anticipate “where” the facial features will be decades down the road. This projection can help them design a treatment plan that takes advantage of these projected changes.

For example, orthodontists may begin treatment before a patient’s teenage years with techniques that serve to guide jaw growth. Keeping that development on track will help if or when braces may be needed a few years later. Guiding jaw growth will help shorten the distance of where a patient is in their orofacial development and where they should be later in life with normal development.

Orthodontists aren’t predictors of the future. But armed with an understanding of the aging process, they can help patients head in the right direction to produce a smile and facial appearance that will endure well into later life.

Before you consider cosmetic changes to your smile, ask yourself one question: how's your bite? How your teeth are positioned and aligned doesn't just affect their function — it also affects your appearance. A proper bite is foundational to a beautiful smile — and it deserves your attention first.

Here are 3 important steps for addressing your bite problem on your way to a more attractive smile.

Get an orthodontic evaluation. Only a dentist or orthodontist can determine if your teeth are properly aligned and working well with each other — and if not, why. With their knowledge and expertise they'll be able to tell you what specific bite problem (malocclusion) you have and the best treatment to correct it to support any future cosmetic enhancement.

Consider your tooth-movement options carefully. If you have a malocclusion, your dentist or orthodontist may recommend correction before undertaking other cosmetic work. In most cases, you'll have two choices. The first is traditional metal braces, which uses wires held in place and anchored by brackets cemented to the teeth. They're effective, but must be fixed in place and aren't considered attractive. The other choice is clear aligners, which use custom removable plastic trays worn in sequence to gradually move teeth. They're easier for oral hygiene and are hardly noticeable to others, but may not work in every bite situation.

Don't slack on the retainer phase of treatment. The day will come when the braces or aligners come out of your mouth for good. But your realignment project isn't over — you'll need to wear a retainer appliance for a while. Re-aligned teeth can relapse to their former positions, so it's essential you wear a retainer to keep them where they've been moved. Without a retainer, all the time and effort invested in your bite will have been to no avail.

In a nutshell: get the big picture about your bite, choose the treatment best for you and follow through on every phase. The end result will be a solid platform for the smile you've always dreamed about.